A Midnight Paradox
by Swamp Fairy
Summary: Instead of a cohesive memory, she has a tangled mess of images from the night before. The one thing she knows for sure is that it was all a mistake. Joanlock... sort of.


The first thing they were taught was to never, under any circumstances, drink alcohol or use drugs around a client. _The word 'sober' is in your job title. Remember that. _And for her, it had never once been a problem- until that night. True, officially she was no longer his sober companion, but she understood that keeping him whole, keeping him away from the drugs, was still as much her job as the detective work. So what _utter __stupidity_ had caused her to take a cab to a bar instead of going home to the Brownstone with Sherlock after the case?

It was too many things, all at once. The two-year anniversary of the death of the patient she had killed in surgery. The fear from the case, still present in her shaking voice as she ordered the drinks. And something newer and even more terrifying, in the way her stomach had dropped when Sherlock wrapped an arm around her shoulder, in the way she had felt her hair stand on end when he whispered into her ear. She felt like she was losing control. She needed control. And so, paradoxically, she drank, and she drank.

She knew herself, and she knew she wasn't drunk. She wasn't sober, either, though; she was in a slightly hazy in-between state. She took a cab home, she remembered that, the leather seat cool against her cheek and the unfamiliar accent of the cabbie as she tipped him. And she remembered hoping against hope that Sherlock was already asleep so she wouldn't have to deal with these new (old) _feelings_ that she couldn't stand.

But he wasn't asleep. He was in the kitchen, drinking hot chocolate from the Einstein mug and pegging her with those piercing blue eyes. Waiting for her. She should have known he would still be up. She had met his gaze, unsure of what to say. He thanked her, for her help with the case, and she nodded, composed. But this was Sherlock Holmes, and he read her like a book.

That was where her memory failed her. She couldn't remember who had bridged the gap, who had said what, who had kissed who first. She decided that the memory loss was a combination of the drinking, of the emotion. She did remember thinking he would taste the alcohol on her and that was _bad_ and that part had to have been in the kitchen because the counter was pressing against her spine.

Somehow they got upstairs. She remembered in flashes, in fits and starts. His lips pressing hard against hers, his tongue between her teeth and his fingers in her hair. The feel of his stubble against her face, of his chest beneath her hand, of his breath warming her ear. If she closed her eyes she could hear him laughing as she tore at the bed sheets that got tangled between their bodies, feel the echo of a smile on her own mouth.

Then there were the unrelated memories: the oddly orange light from the bedside lamp, the sound of a siren close outside the house. There was no sequence of events in her mind, just a tangled mess of images. She wished she could put a timeline together, a timeline of post-it-notes and snapshots that would let her figure out exactly what had led to her lying on her side in _his _bed, awake and still and silent, for the past three hours.

He couldn't have been more than six inches away but at the same time he was a whole world apart. She knew he wasn't asleep, could hear his even breathing. Her own breath tore in her throat. She would never get the sound out of her head, the name soft on his tongue as she'd pressed her lips to his neck.

_Irene._

She shivered. Only a bed sheet covered her, but she lacked the willpower to pull the quilt up or to move to her own bed—either action was so final. Too final. Right now they existed in-between, where they could almost pretend that the stupid, stupid thing had never happened.

Except she was so cold. She wanted desperately, desperately, for him to hold her. But the chances of him moving were nil, and she couldn't imagine what she would do if she rolled over, rolled over and put her arms around him and he pushed her away or (worse) lay there as still as he was now.

She had made an even worse mistake than being less than sober around a client. She had fallen for one—and one who was too broken, who was missing too many pieces. She had a compulsion to fix broken people, but Sherlock would take so much more than inspiring quotes, her hand against his shoulder, her silhouette beside him in AA meetings, and her unwavering support. He was fractured beyond repair. Probably, in some sick way, that's why she wanted him.

She sat up suddenly, surprising even herself, and swung around to sit on the edge of the bed. She hunched over, letting her hair drape across her face and noting the moonlight that filtered through it. "I'm going to go shower," she said quietly.

Receiving no response, she climbed to her feet and headed to the bathroom to wash the scent of his skin off of her.

* * *

**Because as much as I love them, I don't know if I quite buy the happy-feels-and-marshmallow-fluff-and-butterflies scenario. Please review!**


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